


Dropping the Mask

by Erynnsilver



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 02:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4729916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erynnsilver/pseuds/Erynnsilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The inquisitor considers herself after her encounter with the Orlesian court. Deliberately short thought exercise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dropping the Mask

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, fair warning, I am not a skilled wordsmith by any means.

She has smiled easily, on command. The right words flowed from her lips without apparent consideration. The ease of her conduct had surprised her more naive companions, the navigation of the nobles at the winter palace as natural as her first days had been with them. Something she expected they would be considering later on, now they had seen her performance for what it was.

  
She wondered what she would tell them. How long it took her to trust, how easily she conjured a smile, the neutrality on her face that hid her every calculation. Maybe they would not think to liken her early conduct with that at the Orleasen court. Alone it seemed Leliana, Bull, and of all people, Solas, remained unsurprised by her mastery of the intrigue. Why answer a question when you can ask one yourself? Show them no weakness. Smile at their jokes and their platitudes. Nothing new for an elf among shems. Or perhaps it was. Her clan had never dealt with outsiders so well as it did with her smiling at the traders.

  
They had always viewed her with more than a little distrust. She did not lie, precisely, but she had become accustomed to hiding her truth long, long before she had been sent away.  
Her keeper had seen her potential well enough, though. Not a liar, but certainly capable of deception. Well enough to talk her way in to the conclave.  
It had not gone as expected.  
She lay in a hot bath by the fire in her room atop the high tower of skyhold and allowed herself a moment of weakness. Her face relaxed. She sank under the water and left herself there for as long as she could, trying to erase every thought and impulse in her. Let the calculations end, for just a few moments. Feel the knot of panic that came from knowing that every moment her followers may realise she was an imposter, no herald of a false god. A sham in armour and carrying a staff, leading them all to death while trying to keep herself alive. Holding them all together with words spun from whatever strands she could find to pull on in the moment. Nothing but spit, polish, and will.

 

Then she sat up, and her face was once again carefully neutral. Unreadable until she chose to make it otherwise.  
And they were surprised at her political success.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to explore the idea that the blank face she wears to let us impose our own ideas about what she is thinking wasn't a developer choice - it was actually a facet of the character, and perhaps those times where she aims to say the right things to her companions are not merely player choices - but her own.
> 
>  
> 
> Also I have no idea what tags if any to throw on here.


End file.
